European democracy

Dimitrios Droutsas is the rapporteur for opinion on ACTA in the LIBE (Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs) committee of the European Parliament. Below is an abstract of his draft report that demonstrates an insight and a democratic commitment that should act as an example for his colleagues and for policy makers everywhere. In particular, other committees such as the JURI committee should realize that it is vain and offensive to democracy to use procedural tricks in order to prevent the Parliament from taking a clear and timely decision to reject ACTA.

The culture of file-sharing, enabled by the remarkable technological advance of the last decades, certainly poses direct challenges to the way we have dealt with compensation of artists and proper enforcement of intellectual rights for the past decades. Our task, as policymakers, is to overcome this challenge by striking an acceptable balance between the possibilities that technology unravels and the continuation of artistic creation, which is an emblematic token of Europe’s place in the world.

We are therefore, at a defining moment of this debate, an exciting juncture of change. In this sense, your Rapporteur believes that ACTA comes at a very premature stage and a possible adoption of the Treaty would essentially freeze the possibility of having a public deliberation that is worthy of our democratic heritage.